The present invention relates to a coking battery. More particularly this invention concerns a method of operating a multichamber coking battery and an apparatus for heating up one chamber of such a battery after its walls had been renewed or replaced.
It is necessary periodically to renew the refractory walls of a coking battery. Rarely must all of the walls be renewed or replaced at the same time, so that frequently only one or more of these walls must be replaced, in particular those walls which are so worn that the flues are opened up into the chambers.
After replacement of walls of coking chambers it is necessary to heat these walls up to the necessary temperture, above 1000.degree. C., so that a coking operation can be carried out. Such heating-up must be carried out extremely slowly, in order to prevent the new walls from cracking and in order to cure the refractory material constituting them.
Thus, it is standard procedure to fit a burner to the aperture in one of the doors of the coking chamber and to line the new walls of this chamber with a protective asbestos mat or the like. The burner is then fired up and operated for a sufficient time to produce the desired temperature in the walls.
Such a system has several disadvantages. First of all the provision of the protective lining for the new walls is relatively difficult and removal of this lining once the chamber is heated to the desired very high temperature is also very difficult. Furthermore, the use of a burner not only entails considerable fuel expense, but also presents the real danger of explosion should the burner become temporarily extinguished and the gases thereafter reignite on the hot walls.